Author and Scriptwriter

'Among the most important writers of contemporary British horror.' -Ramsey Campbell

Free Story

So here's a new regular feature: every Friday I'll be putting a free story up on the blog. It'll be available until next Friday, when it'll be replaced by the next one.

This tale first appeared in a small press anthology called Impossible Spaces, which has some very fine stories in it, and which you can still buy here (or here in the US.) I kept meaning to write more stories, maybe a novel, in Steel City, but never did. Maybe one day. In the meantime, here's...

TRADING FLESH

The dawn seeped like blood through
the room’s thin curtains.Jess woke and
stared at the cracked ceiling.It’d be
easy to stay in bed all day, to keep promising herself she’d rise shortly, till
it was dark again-

She rose.

She sat, giddy
for an instant, then swung her legs out and stood staring at the patterns on
the curtains: you could stare at them all day, get lost in them if you -

She pulled the
curtains wide.

Outside, the
wide and murky Schleine glowed red, a mirror of the dawn.Along it, steelmills and munitions factories
poured smoke skywards. Trains thundered over viaducts and under aqueducts, and
a barge lumbered round the river’s bend-

She turned away.

In the greasy,
dust-dappled mirror she saw herself- a thin high-yellow girl, gaunt-faced,
matted-haired, in a grimy shift.She
wouldn’t look at her forearms, or the needle marks there.She told herself she was still pretty, kept
doing so, in unequal battle with the truth-

She peeled the
shift off over her head.

*

Kralheim Square lay beneath an
intersection of railway viaducts; below the terminus spread a complex of
stockyards, from which slaughtered cattle swarmed out across the nation, and
the big bazaar of Kralheim Market, one of the few parts of Steel City not
dedicated to the making of guns.Here
you could buy joints of meat, fresh or cured or smoked, straight out of the
slaughterhouses, though the pick of it either went out on the trains, or was
collected from the other side of the stockyards from Kralheim Square by coaches
supplying the fine houses of Traubischer. There were fish from the river,
fattened on the drowned and toxic with waste; there were clothes and
knick-knacks from foreign lands, sold by sailors to dockside traders for
drinking and whoring money.

There was more
besides for sale in Kralheim Market, but not on the stalls.

A Stahlhelm
squad marched through the square, bootheels beating time to their NCO’s barked
commands.Sunlight glinted off helmets,
breastplates, gauntlets, pistols.Hard
faces, eyes with the same metallic glint as the rest.

Jess had staked
her claim to a spot beneath one of the viaducts, in the shadow of an alcove
that could do double duty as a coupling-place, if the man was not choosy.And after all, to take her, he hardly could
be.

Other girls
stood at the mouths of alleys or the doorways of tenements.Jess’s landlady would never tolerate her
bringing her custom home, but here it was a different story; a girl with a room
commanded more and better trade than one who could only offer a stinking
alleyway, or the non-privacy of an alcove beneath a viaduct.But the rent for such a place was more than
Jess could pay.

She’d done her
best.She wore a pretty dress she’d kept
clean as she could.On her last beat,
she’d fixed up a make-do shelter from packing crates and an old mattress in the
alley; it gave the men at least some privacy.But a pimp from the Cuttingham district had installed one of his girls
there, threatening Jess’s face with his razor.He hadn’t even offered to take her into his stable.Not that she’d’ve accepted, but that wasn’t
the point.She was bright and could be
enterprising; the little shelter had been a good idea.But no, she wasn’t fit for his little harem.

Or any other, if
she was honest.But she’d tried.Bootblacking had given her hair a shine;
blusher and lipstick hid her pallor.A
drop of belladonna put a shine in her eyes.She just wished for a little kocaine to give her an edge.Or a shot so’s she wouldn’t care.But if wishes were horses, like Momma used to
say, back before the Rising…She made
herself stand straight.

Rail-thin and
lost-looking, she didn’t look like a girl with any steel in her, but men had
learned the hard way that wasn’t so.So
hard a way, that few had lived to profit by the knowledge.For all that, steel wears down, and nowhere
faster than in Steel City.

So when the
black carriage clipclopped to a halt beneath the viaduct and the steps folded
down, a part of her knew there might be danger but she found she didn’t
care.If she lived, she might have money
for a fix; if not, she’d never have to worry about another.Either way, that ache’d stop.And death was a permanent ending; that might
even make it more attractive.

The coachman
leant out, pale, flabby and chinless.“How much?”

“For what,
baby?” she asked.

His voice had
the rough accent of Cuttingham, but he tried to clip and aspirate his words in
the Traubischer manner, marking him out as a rich man’s errand boy.“My employer wishes the pleasure of a lady’s
company for the evening.”

She doubted it
was for real, but still couldn’t seem to care.“Twenty dollars.”

“Fifteen.”

“Take it or
leave it.”It was like watching another
person, hearing another voice.She heard
herself speaking with a defiance she didn’t feel.

The coachman
shrugged.“OK.If you would, mam?”

She boarded the
coach.The door shut.Inside was a bottle of wine in a bucket of
ice.It stood open, a glass at hand, a
whole roast chicken beside.She hesitated
a moment, then shrugged.She rarely felt
hunger nowadays, but now her stomach growled.She tore the chicken apart with thin, dirty fingers, stuffed hunks of it
in her mouth.

The cab rattled
through cobbled streets and mounted the Brandlmeier Bridge. From the bridge she
saw, barring the rivermouth, two gunboats; there were always at least that many
on patrol.

The Brandlmeier
Valley was a dead place now, ever since the Rising, but once it’d been the place to live; an unspoilt haven, in
its day. The Krast, tributary of the Schleine, ran through it into Lake
Voss.Mansions dotted the hillsides
flanking the Krast as the carriage bumped over the potholed road.Gutted and empty, some burned out, others
rotted to shells.Her breath caught at
the sight of one; she was sure she’d seen lights burn inside.

The Risen had
stormed Brandlmeier, and then been penned up in there.Those of its former occupants who’d survived
the Rising now lived mostly in the suburbs of Traubischer, away from the city.Stahlhelm patrols ensured they stayed safe
and well-preserved.

The Valley had
contained a dozen little townships, mostly dotted round Lake Voss.Now they were deserted, pavements and
roadways cracked, the buildings empty, rotting shells whose shadows you didn’t
inspect in case you saw too much movement there.Five years on from the Rising, craters, still
not fully overgrown, dotted the remains of arcades and promenades, parks and
boating lakes. Blackened stone, molten metal, glass warped into strange new
shapes.

Only when the
coach finally climbed the road leading over Suettler’s Hill, the ridge that
closed the Valley off, did she breathe easy.

The hillcrest
still bristled with the heavy guns the Stahlhelm had mounted there during the
Rising. Most of the surviving Risen still lurked in the Valley, venturing out
when hunger drove them. How long must the Stahlhelm have waited for a day like
that, with their training camps and torchlit rallies, all to make ready for
some great cataclysm they could save the city from?Well, it had come, and they’d risen admirably
to the occasion, even saved lives; the downside was the power they’d gained
since.

No-one living
passed through Brandlmeier for any good purpose.For all that, the Stahlhelm patrolling the
ridge showed no hostility.Doubtless,
they recognised the family crest on the carriage.Their officer exchanged a few brief words
with the coachman and shot Jess a casual glance so cold it burned.Then he slapped the side of the coach and it
rattled on.

The coach passed
over Suettler’s Hill into Rattinglea, the buffer zone of worker’s housing
filling the gap between dead Brandlmeier and living Traubischer.They passed rows of dilapidated tenements not
unlike Jess’s own, till these gave way to rows of terraces. The better part of
Rattinglea; close to Traubischer, for the better-paid workers.

The coach pulled
down a sidestreet and stopped outside a narrow house with boarded-up
windows.The coachman opened the door
and Jess stepped down, weaving slightly from the wine.

The house door
opened.The man in the doorway was bald
on top, eyes bright and hard above a broken nose and drooping moustache.He wore canvas trousers, military boots and a
leather apron. Bare arms; shoulders heavy with muscle.

Now Jess knew
something was wrong, and despite her earlier apathy, she found she cared.She stepped back.Hinter’s smile broadened; he took a step
forward.She tried to run, but Schengen,
moving back, had drawn a small, nickel-plated .32 revolver.

“Do as you’re
told, lady.”He pursed his lips.“Move.”

Hinter caught
her arm and bundled her in through the door.Just before he moved to blot out the view of the street, she saw
Schengen put the gun away.

“See you later,”
she heard him call.

Hinter
back-heeled the door shut.“Move.”

When she wasn’t
fast enough, he grabbed her hair in one hand and arm in the other, manhandled
her to a doorway and forced her face-up against the wall.She heard him fumbling in his clothing and
feared sodomy for an instant, but he was only finding a key.He unlocked the door, booted it wide, hurled
her through.

She hit the
floor; the door slammed behind her.Shapes moved in the gloom; only thin light filtered through the boarded
window.She looked up, gulping breath,
and saw two other women in the bright but tattered clothes common to their
profession.One was high-yellow like
her, with a scarred cheek; the other was thin, pale and yellow-haired, red
round the nostrils from too much kocaine.

“Shit,” said the
scarred girl.

The
yellow-haired girl ignored her.“You
OK?” she asked Jess.

Jess stood,
grimaced at pain from a bruised hip.“I’ll live.”

The scarred girl
let out a short, bitter laugh.

“Keisha!” said
the yellow-haired girl, and offered Jess her hand.“Name’s Lily.”

“Jess.”Jess warmed to few people, but took a shine
to Lily on sight.It was the height and
poise, the near-mannish self-assurance.Like Rose had been.Jess blinked
fast; she hadn’t thought of Rose in a long time, and to do so stung her now.

“Don’t go to
pieces, girl,” said Keisha.

“Don’t mind Keisha,” Lily said.“She’s just scared.We all are.”

“What’s going
on?” asked Jess.

Keisha
laughed.“Don’t you know anything?This is a butch-club.”

Butch for butcher; weakness seeped through Jess’s legs.

“We don’t know
that,” Lily said.

“Bullshit.”

Outside they
heard the clipclop of the carriage going.“Think three whores’ll be enough for them?” Keisha asked, suddenly
subdued.“Or he gonna get more?”

Lily knotted
thin, bony fingers in a weave.“I think
we’re all they need.”

*

At one point Keisha tried screaming
for help, but Hinter simply stormed in and punched her in the stomach- so’s not
to mark the face- till she’d vomited.Now that sour reek was added to that of sweat.Pointless in any case; the houses either
side, and indeed half the street, were empty.

After that,
Jess’s spasm of concern for her fate seemed to have passed; now she rested,
head in Lily’s lap.Lily sang
quietly.The fight had bled out of them
horribly fast; all that seemed left was quelling the rising panic as death
approached.

Jess closed her
eyes, dreamt of Rose.Her big sister had
raised her after Momma and Poppa died.Rose and Thibodeaux, the musician she’d took up with.Jess’d liked Thibodeaux; the three of them’d
been happy, in their tenement not far from Brandlmeier Bridge.Before the Rising.

Thibodeaux sat
on the back step, head bowed over his guitar as he played.Rose sat in the yard, in a rocker, head bowed
over her sewing.The guitar strings
broke as Thibodeaux plucked a difficult chord, and the thread of Rose’s sewing
tangled and unravelled.They both looked
up; their faces were mottled dry and grey.Their eyes red.Their mouths
wide, drooling, full of teeth.Hungry;
ravening.They stood and advanced.Jess woke.

“Hush
there.”Lily stroked her brow.

“Bad dream,”
whispered Jess.

“The Rising,
right?”Lily smiled sadly.“I’ve had that dream too.”

Jess looked
away.“Where’d you live?”

“Narrellton.Got out just in time.Before the Stahlhelm sealed it off and…”Lily didn’t finish the sentence; both women
could remember Narrellton.For all she’d
gone through at the time and young as she’d been, Jess recalled the pyre that
district had become.

“You lose anyone
in that?”Jess asked softly.

Lily shook her
head.“Came to Steel City on my
own.Didn’t have anyone to lose.Best way.”

Rose and Thibodeaux.Jess nodded.For the first time, she wanted to tell.“My folks came back.Momma and
Poppa.They- came home.My sister and her husband, they… I was the
only one got out.”

She heard a
strangling in her voice.Lily stroked
her hair.“Easy.”

“What’re we
gonna do?”whispered Jess.The fear was back, but she’d still no idea of
how to use it, to make it go away.

“I don’t know,
honey,” Lily said.

Keisha huddled
in the far corner, rocking.

“She OK?”

“Strung out is
all.”

Jess licked her
lips.Had Lily seen the marks on her
arms?The long-sleeved dress might’ve
hid them.Keisha let out a moan; Jess
shivered.Me soon, she thought.Unless
death intervened to prevent it.Once
again, she wondered if it might not be welcome.

*

Jess was shaking in the early
stages of withdrawal when the clatter of hooves sounded outside the house.

The only sound
in the room was Keisha’s moaning, Jess’s whimpers as the slow, killing
boneache, the sweats and the nausea, sank in, and the soft croon of Lily’s
singing.

A banging on the
door.Voices; Hinter’s rumble,
Schengen’s clipped tones, and new voices- young and sharp and braying.

The door flew
open and Hinter entered, lamp in hand.Jess squinted in the dark, and Lily’s hand rose to her face.Only Keisha didn’t seem to notice, rocking
and moaning.

“Take your
pick,” said Hinter.

One of the three
young men who’d entered with him smiled and rubbed his chin.“Spoilt for choice, huh?”

“We’ve got all
night,” said another, a pallid boy whose white-blonde hair seemed to glisten in
the light.

The first boy
was tall, powerfully built- looked the kind who’d have his pick of girls.But then, he was from a good family; any
girls he’d know would be nice ones.Probably started going with whores young and then… Jess gave up trying
to work it out.She’d had more than her
share of strange men in her time, guys who wanted things she’d never
understand, baffled as to how they could give pleasure.Normally she’d shrug; some of the weird ones
could be pretty harmless, less work than the regulars, but then you got the
ones like this who could only spend if they saw blood.Drew it.In fatal quantities.No point
trying to understand what kinked a man to do that.Least of all now.

The tall boy was
still rubbing his chin.The third was
small and fat, bouncing from the ball of one foot to the other; the joke of the
group, the clown.There was always
one.“Whaddaya say, guys?Which one d’ya wanna start with?”

“Shut up,
Adam.”The tall one’s eyes trekked round
the room with lazy cruelty.For a guilty
moment, Jess felt relief as she saw them aimed above her, at Lily- the other
girl’s fingers tightened again- but then rolled down to focus on her.She couldn’t even whimper, she was too
afraid.She just watched the smile
spread on the tall boy’s face, saw the pink tongue-tip stroke his red lips, saw
them part to speak her death sentence.

Keisha carried
on.Jess doubted she even knew the boys
were there; most likely she was heaping abuse on the head of some long ago
enemy, but it didn’t matter.“Motherfuckers.Two-bit
peckerwood piece a shit trash.Dicks
like goddamn maggots. Limpdicks, limpdicks.”Her laugh was sudden and loud and jagged as broken glass; she waggled a
little finger in imitation of a flaccid prick.

“Shut up,” Jess
heard Lily whisper, and gripped the other girl’s hand hard to quiet her.Awful, guilty relief, to feel the killing
focus shift from you to another.

All three boys
were watching, silent, as Keisha laughed and cursed.Hinter’s face was blank in the flickering
lantern’s glare; behind the boys, out of the shadows in the hall, Schengen’s
face leapt out as he lit a cigarette.
“Whaddaya think?”Adam’s voice tremored with excitement; his first time, perhaps.“Huh?Huh?Tony?George?Whaddaya think?”He turned to the
tall boy again.“Tony?”

“Shut up, Adam.”Tony sighed.His gaze never left Keisha.She
was looking at him now, face twitching.Tony smiled and pointed.“Her.”

Hinter nodded,
headed forward, caught Keisha by the hair.She was already squirming backward, coming back to the real world just
in time to leave it for good, and began to scream and beg as he hauled her up.

George tutted,
sighed, and shook his head.“Thought
she’d have a little more spunk in her than that.”

“Hey, don’t
worry, George,” Adam cackled.“She soon
will.Huh?Huh?”

“Shut up, Adam.”

With a last,
wailing scream, Keisha was dragged out by Hinter.The three boys followed and the door slammed.

The key turned
in the lock, and feet thumped upstairs.Keisha’s voice, wailing and begging, receded with them.

A long silence.

Then, directly
over their heads, a new kind of screaming began.

After a time,
something that wasn’t water started dripping from the ceiling onto the bare,
stained floor.

At long last,
the screams began to fade.Jess damned
herself again by silently begging them to find a new lease of life; the longer
Keisha suffered, the longer till it was her turn.Except of course that the longer it took to
kill one…

Keisha’s moans
abruptly stopped.There was another
silence, then a round of laughter.

Tony shouted
Hinter and Schengen.Their feet climbed
the stairs.There was the sound of
something heavy being dragged away, bumping down the staircase to a back
room.A mumbled conversation, and then
Hinter’s footsteps began to descend.

All ambiguity
fled; I want to live, Jess
realised.“Help me,” she whispered.“Help me, help me-”

Lily’s hand
tightened further still on hers.The
door flew open and Hinter stepped through.He grinned and started towards them.Take Lily take Lily take L-

The Risen
turned, still chewing slowly, as Schengen raised the gun and fired.It advanced on him.The .32 barked again and again.Fool,
thought Jess, don’t you know you can’t
kill the dead?Only fire’d stopped
the Rising, fire and bombs.Turn the
Risen to ashes, or blow them into pieces so small they could do nothing.

The floor split,
clawed hands smashing out through the floorboards to grab Hinter.A last attempted scream and the boards under
him collapsed; he vanished into the dark.

Schengen’s
pistol clicking empty.The Risen fell
upon him, the collision carrying them both out into the hallway.A scream, a tearing of flesh, a breaking of
bone- then silence.

The Risen
returned.It held Schengen’s head in one
hand, by the hair, dragged the body by the collar with the other. With a
shrugging motion, it flung both down the hole in the floor.

Screams from
upstairs.Feet thundered down the
staircase.The Risen turned.Jess caught a glimpse of Adam, clad only in a
shirt, shit smeared down the backs of his bare legs, trying to run for the
door- and then the Risen leapt.People
thought of the Risen as lumbering and slow, with no knowledge of their former
lives, but that was just how they were when newborn- Jess knew, firsthand, how
fast they could move.

It seized Adam
and held him, swung him high as it returned.Adam kept screaming helplessly.With a snarl, the Risen swung him forward, launched him into the hole.Adam’s screams reached a crescendo as much of
unbelief as agony- from one of the favoured children to meat for the dead in
seconds- and then ceased among sounds of rending and breakage.

There was a
crash out back, where Keisha’s body had been dumped.

The Risen
advanced on Lily and Jess.Up above,
something came down the stairs, with the sound of heavy objects being dragged.

The Risen loomed
over her.Its red eyes found hers.

“Jessss,” it
said, thickly, at last.

“Thibodeaux,”
she managed.

Lily was staring
at her.

“You are
alright?” The Risen asked.

She nodded.

“You left it
late to call us.”

“Forgot.Was so scared.”

The Risen shook
its head.“You know you want to join
us,” it said.“You were too slow, that
day, trying to escape.Death got into
you that day.Been in you ever
since.Why you keep shooting dope.Get away from the living.”

The dragging
footsteps were at the bottom of the stairs.

“Rose misses
you,” it said.

“I miss her.”

“Then come with
us.”

“No.”

Thibodeaux
sighed.It was like wind in the mouth of
an open grave.“As you choose.”Another sigh, as she shivered before it.“I know what you need, child.”A clawed hand slipped into the remains of its
jacket.“You know you don’t hunger for
that stuff in the grave.”

“Thibodeaux,
this is Lily,” said Jess, fighting a mad urge to laugh.“Lily, Thibodeaux.”

Lily whimpered,
hand tight on Jess’s.The six shiny
packets winked in the light at her feet.

*

Dusk in Steel City looks so much
like the dawn: it comes blood-coloured, the red fading into darkness instead of
light.

The sun rose
over the Schleine as seen from Jess’s room, and set behind her; it was almost
black outside when she stumbled in through the door and collapsed on the bed,
lamplighters moving down the streets, leaving gaslights burning in their wake.

She let her
composure go and sobbed to let out the day’s pent-up fright and grief and
shame.Finally she straightened up and
peeled off the dress, cast it aside.Found her shift, pulled it back on.

She felt dirtied
by the house in Rattinglea, and would’ve dearly loved a shower to lose the
grime and sweat, but there’d be no hot water left by now.Still, she had something better.She lit a candle, filled a spoon with water from
the ewer, tipped cinnamon-brown dust from the first packet into the mix, the
needle held ready for it to liquefy.

When it did, the
needle slid into a vein; she pressed the plunger down.A warm liquid rush filled her and she lazed
back on the bed.Her fingers stroked the
other six packets, and she waited for the dope to make it all go away, all the
things she did and had done to see another dawn, the knowledge of the Risen’s
secret ways beneath the city, the thrashing knot inside her of the urge to live
and the wish to return to her family’s embrace; she waited for that, and Lily’s
face, to fade.